To my Mom,
Deep down I'm still really angry that you home schooled me. From when I was little, teaching myself to tie my shoes, to using the big kid potty, to learning how to read, to long division, I had to teach myself or listen to you teach the boys. I understand that you were a very busy mommy of 6 working full time, but there were more options than just homeschooling all of us. The boys really needed you to home school them when they would young and learning how to read, back when they would fly off the handle. But me, I was just a regular little girl that was a little bit advanced for my age. I could have been put in public school when I was little so I could learn important staples of education, like simple editing marks or the FOIL method. I missed those because you were doing the best you could with the boys and the rest of us kids and work. I don't blame you for being busy, or having so many kids, but I do blame you for keeping me at home. I would have thrived in public school, no matter how flawed it was. I could have taken advanced classes and still strived for excellence, because that's my nature. In a way, you held me back by trying to get the best for me. You kept me from becoming socially aware until I started travelling for sports, where I got rudely reminded of all my underdeveloped social quirks that come with homeschooling.
Not to mention that I have now come to hate homeschooling. Not only hate, but I despise it. Every single day, sitting at home and missing out on everything that goes on at the high school is like my own personal Hell. It enables me to procrastinate and to put things off or get away with being lazy. I hate that it makes me like that. I just feel so mad and frustrated the longer I sit at home wasting my time. Don't get me wrong, I love the free time, I really do! I just wish I could spend it with others. I hate that you didn't let me get my schooling for math at the school sooner, no matter your reasons. It's really embarrassing to have to re-take Algebra 2 because I never learned the rules of exponents and such. And I'm not saying that it's all your fault, but really, could you have expected a 13 year old girl to have the self motivation to teach herself Algebra? You got me hating math so much that I started settling for B's. Homeschooling has ruined English for me. I hate every second that I write my papers, the paper that I basically write so it looks like you're doing your job of "teaching" me. Honestly, I can't even remember the last time you tried to teach me something.
Actually, that's a lie. I remember you were trying to teach me pre-algebra and was trying to force me to do a problem your way, which is not the way my brain works. You never got that my learning style was different than all your other kids. You would always tell me, "Trust me, I've taught this to 5 other kids before. I know what I'm doing," and you may have known what you were doing with them, but you didn't with me. So I suffered. And hated math.
